When to lean in and when to retreat?
Embodied Discernment is a process of tuning into yourself and your responses to a situation and asking:
Is this the time to follow the automatic response of my body?
Or
Is what I’m feeling an indication that I am dancing on the growth edge and consequently, to embrace the discomfort?
When we begin to work at the level of the nervous system, we start to recognize the default pattern of our body in response to stress or systemic activation. For instance, if we have a history of traumatic stress or situations where we were unable to express ourselves or follow our own impulses or we couldn’t respond to our biological needs in the moment, our system copes but installing a default operating procedure. For some of us, it’s a flight response, for some of us, it’s a shutdown response but in both instances, it’s a brace within our nervous system that we drop into when it registers a degree of feeling or activation that it decides is overwhelming.
This happens outside of our conscious control, and often when we are young, but we carry through these bracing patterns to adulthood (unless we do some work to directly unravel them). Integrated unresolved patterns of stress and creating new perspectives involves resensitizing ourselves to when we are reaching our limit. Notice what is occurring that is your body telling you that you are reaching capacity and then honour that WHILE you stay connected to your body.
Resource yourself to lean into experience when it’s necessary, and to honour what’s presenting when you’ve reached your limit in that particular moment.
Embodied discernment.
Onwards.
❤️ Jane
Mindset, movement & nervous system awareness: The Confident Rider Online Program. You can check it out here 👇🏻
www.confidentrider.online/joyride
